Murder Most Howl: A Paws & Claws Mystery (30 page)

“Val was Juliana’s cousin.”

Savannah blinked at me. She wrapped her hand over her mouth. “That explains so much. She’s lucky she’s alive.”

“Why would you say that?”

“She was a daily reminder that he murdered Juliana. I bet she knew or suspected.” She reflected a moment. “I can’t believe I married him.” She shuddered. “He was a low-life scum. Blanche was right. He had to keep marrying naive women who were taken in by him. Once married, we all saw a different side of Norm.”

“Did you know about Blanche before you married him?”

“Oh, sure. But he spun it so that it sounded cool that he had been married to a supermodel. I had no idea that he was so awful to her.” She paused and stroked Twinkletoes. “Norm spent his life trying to acquire things. That’s all we were. His latest acquisition, like a fancy vase.”

“Savannah, do you know who killed Norm?”

“Not a clue. I had no idea so many people hated him. As awful as it is that he was murdered, I think the killer did us all a favor. Especially me. If he hadn’t killed Norm, I might be the one who was dead right now.”

Savannah dug into a slice of apple cake like she was hungry. Poor thing. She had fallen into the clutches of a truly unscrupulous man. Everything she said rang true, but I was no closer to understanding who had killed Norm or injured Myrtle.

“Did a petite woman with dark hair and silver streaks come by to see you yesterday?”

“No. Who are you talking about?”

“Myrtle. The woman who was attacked.”

Savannah frowned at me. “Was she supposed to?” She gasped. “Was she on her way to see me when she was attacked?”

“It’s possible. She went off by herself but no one knows why.”

Someone knocked on the door.

Savannah gasped and gazed around as though she was searching for a place to hide.

I understood her fear but seriously doubted that her stalker waited on the other side of the door. Nevertheless, I opened it cautiously.

Trixie and Gingersnap bounded past Dave as he strode inside.

“I hear Dwight scared you.”

“Dwight?” asked Savannah.

“He’s a cop. We thought it might be a good idea to have someone watching you. There aren’t too many loan sharks around here. None in Wagtail, actually, so we think we know who your visitors were, but Norm was, uh, well, he might have had connections we aren’t aware of.”

“You really ought to tell a person,” I protested. “She was scared half out of her mind.” I could hear a dog barking.

“It cuts both ways. If she knew, she might act differently, not be as careful or even take a soda out to him or something and give him away.”

Zelda stepped to the doorway. “One of the guests called. There’s a little commotion of some sort upstairs.”

Thirty-three

Someone was barking frantically in the distance. Ella Mae? Puddin’?

“Excuse me.”

I dashed up the back stairs. Now two dogs were barking.
Oh swell
.

A little crowd had formed in the hallway outside Catch. I wedged past them into the room where Robin was staying. I recognized Trixie’s rump sticking up in the air. Her head was under the bed. Puddin’ lay on her stomach with her head under the bed. What was going on under there?

“The dogs are all wild about something,” said Robin.

I dashed to the housekeeping closet where we kept flashlights just for this kind of emergency and was back in less than a minute. There was no choice but to lie down and look for myself. I suspected the mouse from last night’s little drama may have found its way to Catch.

Sure enough, the cute little devil was under the bed, frozen with fear. An odd assortment of items was underneath the bed with him.

I considered my options. Maybe I could whisk him out of there with a wide flat janitor’s broom. But then he would run, and the dogs would give chase, and we’d go through this in some other area of the inn.

Ben crouched next to me. “What is it?”

“The mouse Leo brought in last night.”

“Really? How do you know it’s the same one? Do you recognize him?”

I banged my arm against his leg lightly. This was no time for silly jokes. I backed up and sat on my legs. “If I get a broom and manage to pull him out, could you be ready to pop a little wastebasket over him?”

“Sure. How hard could that be?”

Ben clearly had no experience with mice.

I returned to the housekeeping closet and fetched a wide broom. I didn’t know if my plan would work but I didn’t know what else to do. When I returned, a little crowd had gathered at the door. I made my way through them to find Ben holding the wastebasket from the bathroom, and Robin questioning him about what was happening.

“Ready?” I asked. I knelt on the floor, lay down next to the broom, and slid it under the bed slowly so it wouldn’t alarm the mouse. His beady little eyes seemed to stay focused on me. I scooted it past him, then tried to get it behind him.

With the broom in position, I backed away from the bed and knelt again, ready to pull the broom out, and hopefully, the mouse with it.

Unfortunately, at the exact moment that I pulled the broom, Leo came to see what was going on and wedged himself under the bed.

I pulled, Leo hissed, and Ben plunged the wastebasket over—a tissue box. We didn’t get the mouse.

I had to assume the mouse had taken shelter in the other things under the bed. It struck me as more than a little bit odd that Robin had lost so many items under her bed. Had she kicked them all there? Why would anyone do that?

This time the broom brought out a treasure trove of items.

“Hey, that’s my wallet.” Ben bent down and plucked it from the pile.

“Be careful,” I warned. “The mouse is in there somewhere.”

Ben looked in his wallet. His eyes met mine. “Nothing’s missing.”

This was definitely weird. Was Robin a thief who had been caught by a mouse? “I didn’t know you had lost it,” I whispered.

“Me, either. I thought it was up in your apartment in the guest room where I left it.” He shoved it into his back pocket.

Ben lifted the wastebasket off the tissue box and held it at the ready.

I picked up a T-shirt and shook it gently. A pair of glasses lay under it. The missing reading glasses? I placed them on the bed along with an eyebrow pencil, one glove, two mismatched socks, and a traveler’s sewing kit. A bunch of tissues lay in a bundle. I shook them out, one at a time. No mouse.

I looked under the bed one more time. No mouse. No other items. Either he had made a clean break, or Leo had nabbed him.

“Thank goodness everyone stopped barking.” Char barged into the room carrying Ella Mae in her arms. “My glove! I’ve been looking everywhere for that.” She leaned over to take it. “What’s it doing in here?”

Robin had flushed redder than a cranberry. “I don’t know. I truly don’t know how any of that stuff got under my bed.”

I didn’t say anything in the hope that she would keep talking. They were odd things to take from people, which made it all the more sad that she felt the need to swipe them. Except of course, for Ben’s wallet, which was a very serious matter.

Robin was totally flustered. “You have to believe me. Ask anyone. This isn’t something I would do. I’m not a kleptomaniac. Really.”

She sniffled and leaned over to grab a tissue out of the box, touching it with one hand and pulling with the other. When she did, the mouse flew out and scrambled for safety. Leo and the dogs chased after him, out the door and down the hall.

“Holly,” said Ben, “aren’t you going after them?”

I focused on something else. Something I’d thought we would never find. In the tissue box lay a multiple-dose insulin pen.

Thirty-four

As calmly as I could, I said to Ben, “Dave is downstairs in the office. Would you please ask him to come here now?”

He looked in the box. His expression told me that he had recognized the item as an insulin pen, too. He left immediately.

I stood up. Pretending that everything was normal, I said, “All right. Everyone out, please.”

Char evidently thought everyone did not include her. She thrust the glove toward Robin. “You knew I was looking for this. You even suggested that I must have lost it and that I should buy a new pair. Which I did!”

Robin seemed at a loss. I wasn’t surprised. How do you explain to your friends that you took something of theirs? Or that you have a murder weapon hidden in a tissue box underneath your bed?

“Really, Char. Why would I want your glove? Or two socks that don’t match? And that eyebrow pencil isn’t even my color.”

Dave strode in with Ben.

Robin recoiled at the sight of him.

I pointed to the tissue box.

Dave knew what he was looking at immediately. “Has anyone touched it?”

“It was under the bed.” I gestured toward the broom. “I pulled it out with that.” And then I gasped. “Robin grabbed a tissue.”

She glared at me.

She was either brilliant or stupid. If she knew that was where she had hidden the insulin pen used to kill Norm, then it was stupid to pull a tissue from the box. On the other hand, it was a good way to explain any fingerprints of hers that they might find on the box.

“It was in the box under the bed? Or did you put it in the box?” he asked.

“It was in the box. Seems kind of odd, doesn’t it? If this is the murder weapon, you’d think the killer would have hidden it better.”

“I agree. But no one would keep an insulin pen under the bed.”

I nodded. “Not very sanitary.”

“But isn’t that what makes it a great hiding place?” asked Ben.

“Could it have been left by a previous occupant?”

“I guess so. Marisol is pretty good about cleaning, though. I think she would have found it.”

“Which one is Robin?” asked Dave.

To her credit, Robin stepped toward him and held out her hand. “Robin Jarvis.”

“This is your room?” he asked.

“Yes. But I have never seen this stuff before. Maybe the tissue box but they all look alike.”

“Everyone wait in the hallway, please. Especially you, Ms. Jarvis.”

I followed along, but Dave grabbed my arm. “Not you!”

He pulled out a camera. “Tell me exactly where and how you found this.”

I explained in detail from the barking to the mouse to the insulin pen. “You think it’s the one that was used to murder Norm?”

He didn’t answer me. He put on gloves and pulled a paper bag out of his jacket.

“Do you always carry evidence bags?”

“I do when I’m looking for evidence. I didn’t think we’d find this. What do you know about Robin?”

“Not much. She arrived late the night of the Murder Most Howl introduction meeting. She’s friends with Geof and Charlotte Tredwell, who are staying here, and with Blanche and Ian Tredwell, who are staying at Randolph Hall.” I switched to a whisper. “There’s been some idle gossip that something might be going on between Geof and Robin.”

“Like what?”

“They’ve just been seen together. It might not be anything. She likes to hike, and he likes to run, so maybe they just share a love of the outdoors.”

Dave was clearly sarcastic when he said, “Yeah, sure.”

His sarcasm aside, I realized the importance of that information. Robin might have hidden the pen for Geof. Or Geof might have hidden it in Robin’s room for Blanche or Ian. There was a host of possibilities.

“Mind if I use your office again?”

“Not at all.”

“How soon will we know if this is the pen that killed Norm?”

“I’ll have to send it to the lab. Could be weeks.”

“You’re joking, right? I thought they could test for fingerprints right away.”

Dave lay on the floor and peered under the bed. He pulled out his flashlight and made a slow careful sweep. “I have a hunch, given the season and the preplanning that this murder probably involved, that our killer was wearing gloves.”

“Then how can you prove it’s the one that killed Norm?”

“It’s my understanding that the pens will have a very minor amount of cells in them from the injection. They call it backflow. But it will take time for the lab to test it.”

“What are you looking for under there?”